In a procedure for manufacturing a product, a speed of a machining process, such as turning or lathe turning, has been markedly increased, with recent development of machines used for the process. As compared with the development of the machines related to such process, a finishing process has not been so mechanized, and is still mostly depending on manual labor. As an example of automation currently implemented for such a finishing process, it is known that the automatic finishing machine employing an industrial robot is used partly in the finishing process for a certain part of an airplane. Namely, this automatic finishing machine is configured to provide the finishing process to the work by using the robot having a tool.
As one technique for performing the finishing process, Patent Document 1 listed below teaches one method related to the finishing machine, while Patent Document 2 listed below proposes another method related to a process for removing a burr from the product or the like. Further, as the technique for finishing the product by using the robot, one method for machining the product while controlling the force applied by the robot has been known (Patent Document 3 listed below), and another method for teaching the robot about an arbitrary curved face has been proposed (Patent Document 4 listed below).
Patent Document 1: JP2006-058961A
Patent Document 2: JP2004-322242A
Patent Document 3: JP8-243910A
Patent Document 4: JP6-285762A
However, in the techniques for finishing the product by using the automatic finishing machine as described above, if the method for teaching the robot about a desired operation thereof is manually performed, an operator for the finishing machine is required to have considerably high skill. In addition, in the case of such a manual-based method, the operator should teach the robot while repeating try and error, thus requiring unduly much time. Therefore, the production line should be stopped for a long period of time, leading to substantial deterioration of production efficiency. Thus, currently, the method for finishing the product by using such an automatic finishing machine can be applied only to a simple part or region of the work, to which the tool of the machine is readily accessible. Furthermore, this manual-based method for teaching the robot can be performed only in a range in which the robot can be controlled with eyes, thus making it difficult to render such a finishing process highly accurate.
For instance, with an NC lathing machine, an automatic machining process can be carried out, by only preparing an NC tape in an office or the like and then checking the operation of this machine on a production site. Similarly, a technique for applying such an off-line teaching system to the automatic finishing machine has been developed. In other words, it has been attempted to prepare theoretical and optimum teaching data indicative of each desired position of the tool, in advance, on a personal computer (which will be referred to as “PC” below), in order to eliminate a need for special skill or technique for the teaching operation. Further, it has been studied to reduce the time required for teaching the robot on the production site as well as to extend a range to which the automation can be applied.
Although accurate three-dimensional teaching data can be obtained in advance by using the off-line teaching system as described above, a positional deviation tends to occur in an actual environment for machining the work or the like, relative to an ideal environment prepared on the off-line teaching system. Therefore, with adequate correction for such a positional deviation, a significantly accurate finishing process can be securely performed.